What do we really want? We hire a beat cop who while walking his beat, collects all kind of info. He keeps it in his database until something pops up. He walks by a building and through the window observed a guy with a tattoo. He didn’t invade the guy’s privacy. He just did what we asked him to do: keep his eyes and ears open.

Six months later, a crime is committed by a guy with a similar tattoo. That guy becomes interesting. He is not brought in for questioning, not arrested, but looked at more critically than the guy across the street who doesn’t have a tattoo.

Isn’t that what domestically we are asking the NSA to do? Those telephone numbers are just part of a database that by themselves mean nothing. No one, out of the blue, is listening to telephone conversations or reading emails.

Get over it!

Jim Hamm

Los Gatos

U.S. must overhaul its mental health system

Dec. 14 marked the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elemen tary School tragedy in Newtown, Conn. The tragedy created intense national debate on many issues.

The vast majority of people living with mental illness are not violent (given all violence in the United States, the mentally ill contribute only 4 percent), but no one can deny that there are holes in the mental health care system. There is an urgent need to make sure that people who need help — especially young people — get it sooner rather than later, before early symptoms become devastating conditions.

Everyone must work together to build a system that includes early screening and evaluation and, when necessary, appropriate treatment.

Let’s not let the national dialogue on mental health end on the first anniversary of the Newtown tragedy. And then let’s move from dialogue to action.

Chris Dresden’s suggestions (Letters, Dec. 17) for saving our waterways from homeless encampments are impractical. Fencing the creeks would be not only unsightly, but expensive and ineffective. Denying medical care would not decrease the homeless population, unless the intention is to hasten their deaths. The problem is city policy, which has always been to keep the homeless out of sight. That is why it demolished the camp near the airport this past spring. It was safely up and away from the river. If we really want to help the homeless, we would encourage them to camp at City Hall Plaza, and provide toilets and trash receptacles. That way, every day our government officials could see how well their actions serve our poorest residents — or how they fail. That would be a much better measure of the general welfare than the size of their political campaign coffers, which is apparently what they use now.

Sandy Perry

Outreach Minister CHAM Deliverance Ministry San Jose

UC’s poor math skills cost Lick Observatory

It has been reported that the UC system is considering reducing, and ultimately eliminating, funding for the Lick Observatory (“Lick faces funding cut,” Page B1, Dec. 17. The University of California funding for the Lick Observatory is reported as $1.8 million per year, and could be cut off by 2018. The Lick Observatory, founded in 1888, is an important resource for scientific research of astronomy.

Meanwhile, the new president of the UC system, Janet Napolitano, announced earlier this year that youths who are in this country illegally will be allowed to attend the UC system and pay in-state tuition and fees. According to the UC websites, this amounts to a taxpayer-funded benefit of $22,878 per year for UC attendance and $11,160 per year for CSU attendance.

Your editorial (Editorial, Dec. 18) correctly points out the danger of antibiotic resistance from failure of the FDA to stop farm use on healthy animals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2011 that the United States sees 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths every year from foodborne organisms. (The European Union had 48,964 cases and 46 deaths in 2009, the most recent year tallied.) Since the European Union has a larger population, the number of deaths per person was more than 100 times larger in the U.S. It’s time for the FDA to start protecting people rather than corporations.